Synchronizing music to video in after effects

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

Sure it can be done.
There are a few ways to go about it.
It depends a lot on the kind of animation you want to do.
You can play the audio only by hitting the “.” key on the numeric pad on your keyboard. Then you can set markers for the beat and changes in music by hitting the “*” on the numeric pad. Once you have these markers you can set your keyframes based on them.

Another way is to convert audio to keyframes:
https://help.adobe.com/en_US/aftereffects/cs/using/WS3878526689cb91655866c1103906c6dea-7da3a.html

If you have Red Giant Trapcode Sound Keys, you can extract keyframes using amplitude or frequency ranges.
https://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/all/trapcode-sound-keys/

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[John Cuevas]

It can be done. Trapcode makes a plugin called soundkeys that analyzes the audio spectrum and then allows you to select portions to convert to keyframes. The demo version only will do 300 keyframes per AE session, but you could open/close/open/close AE until you had an entire song if you were so inclined.

Also check the animation pulldown > Keyframe Assistant > Convert Audio to Keyframes. It’s not as good as soundkeys, but will create keyframes based on volume…that might be good enough to drive your animation.

ETA: “Ted” Jelescu apparently can type a lot faster than me.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor

[Walter Soyka]

Two other sound-related tips:

Select your sound layer and tap LL (the L key twice) to reveal its waveform.

Hold Ctrl (or Cmd on a Mac) to scrub audio while scrubbing the CTI on the timeline.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Peter Mcauley]

And yet another option, this time from from Boris FX, is the BCC Beat Reactor, which can be used to convert audio waveforms into keyframes in the AE timeline. The free trial will enable you to work with the plug-in for a full 2 weeks without commitment or restrictions of any kind.

You can download it here: borisfx.com/downloads

Cheers,

Peter.